BAGHDAD: A car bomb exploded in a market in northern Baghdad’s Shaab neighbourhood yesterday, killing eight people and wounding 22, police and medics said.
Another bomb in the capital’s southeast killed two people, sources said.
They were the latest explosions to shake the mainly Shia city. Many of the bombings have been claimed by radical Sunni Islamic State fighters who have seized control of large parts of north and west Iraq, as well as a belt of land around Baghdad.
In Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar, a local official reported heavy clashes between armed forces and Islamic State militants who have been fighting for four days to take full control of the city.
Athal Al Fahdawi said the heaviest fighting took place in the Al Hooz neighbourhood, just south of a government complex in the centre of Ramadi which houses the police headquarters and the offices of the Anbar governorate.
Four Islamic State fighters were killed as well as three men from local tribes opposed to the group. The tribesmen were killed when they sought refuge in a booby-trapped house, Fahdawi said.
Islamic State’s lightning capture of territory in June plunged Iraq into its worst security crisis since the 2003 US invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi forces including Shia militia, Kurdish peshmerga and the army, supported since August by US-led air strikes, have retaken parts of some provinces but the group has continued to seize towns in Anbar province.
REUTERS
